I'm an LA-based writer and management consultant. I was an adviser and editor for many years for the father of modern leadership studies, the late USC professor Warren Bennis. And over the past twenty years, I’ve been a chief storyteller for USC, during a time in which Bennis and other leaders helped it skyrocket in global reputation and productivity. I bring a different perspective to leadership--some sober perspective about the realities of being "in charge," along with advice on how to tell great stories that mobilize great communities. I've written for dozens of publications around the world, including the Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor and Japan Times. I serve as a University Fellow at USC’s Center for Public Diplomacy and am a member of the Pacific Council for International Policy. My book Leadership Is Hell (Figueroa Press, 2014) is available on Amazon; all proceeds benefit programs that make college accessible to promising LA urban schoolchildren.

5 Ways To Conquer Pressure

The power to reduce stress is ultimately in your own hands, psychologist Bill Dyment says. (Photo credit: bottled_void)

Pressure and stress can be excuses for us falling short of our goals. Psychologist Bill Dyment, co-author of Fire Your Excuses, says we need to move past those rationalizations. A popular workplace psychology consultant for Fortune 500 companies and organizations of every kind, Dyment offers four steps for dealing with workplace-related pressure.

1. Don’t outsource the job of taking care of yourself.

“One of the most helpful self-care perspectives is fully embracing the idea that it’s not your organization’s job to manage your stress,” Dyment says. “This can be a difficult shift to make in our thinking, especially when we can clearly see that things at work should be different.”

He adds that, while there may be things a company can do to alleviate stress, there are immediate benefits in taking full ownership of our own self-care, rather than waiting and wishing for things to change externally.

“At the end of the day,” he says, “it’s up to us to be the executors of our own stress management program.”

2. Remember that you and your employer may be at cross-purposes.

In the eyes of most managers at most organizations, productivity trumps all other concerns.

Some enlightened ones recognize that long-term productivity (and innovation and quality) are enhanced when workers can re-energize and renew themselves. But most aren’t yet at that level.

Don’t be a victim of that, Dyment says. “As one manager candidly admitted, ‘We’re going to keep asking for more, in the best interest of the organization. You need to tell us when to stop in the best interest of yourself.’”

3. Don’t forget to control what you can control.

Think of the old serenity prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” For some reason, most people don’t pay enough attention to the middle section.

“When we try to understand how two people with the same job title and pressures can respond to stress so differently,” Dyment says, we quickly note that how they spend their evenings, weekends, even lunch hours can make all the difference.”

In other words, don’t blame anyone else if you’re not doing all that you can do to refuel yourself.

4. Connect.

It’s too easy to let time and energy dissipate on FacebookFacebook or Twitter or even on supposedly productive intellectual ventures. Dyment says that fighting excess stress requires quality, face-to-face relationships that are regularly maintained.

“I tell all my clients and audience members that, if you can’t reduce the source of stress, you must increase your support and connections,” he says. “As a general rule, we need three or four deep, one-hour connections with others each week, with whom we can talk about real life. Adjusting our lifestyle to permit such connections is a great place to start.”

5. Plunge into the pressure.

A certain amount of stress and pressure, when embraced, can be rocket fuel. A New York Timesarticle earlier this year provocatively argued the following:

Stress turns out to be far more complicated than we’ve assumed, and far more under our control than we imagine. Unlike long-term stress, short-term stress can actually help people perform, and viewing it that way changes its effect. Even for those genetically predisposed to anxiety, the antidote isn’t necessarily less competition — it’s more competition. It just needs to be the right kind.

Dyment concurs. “There is an optimal level of adrenaline and stress that varies for each of us by task,” he says. “In a very real sense, at insufficient levels of stress and its accompanying hormones, we aren’t fully engaged. Too much stress and our emotional engine becomes flooded and we can become paralyzed and confused. Often, though, our bodies provide just the right blend to equal the task.”

In the end, though, Dyment emphasizes that stress reduction is our job, no one else’s.

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Well put! We recently posted some slightly alarming statistics about employee satisfaction and engagement in the workplace; reframing those numbers by sharing, or even shifting, the burden of responsibility to the employees themselves presents the information in a new light. The situation looks less bleak when it’s realized that the agency for change is shared. As Mr. Dyment points out, we can have more control over the stress in our lives once we step back and understand how much power we possess, rather than standing knee-deep in the chaos of our lives and bemoan our situations. We need more articles like this to make the rounds – thanks for the empowering message!